To cover one's arse...

Okay, let me set the scene up for you. It's a 9:00 in the morning, and I wake up to my wife saying there is an insulation truck next door. Next door to us is a rental property that my grandfather has and is in desperate need of fixing up in order to be rented out to someone. So the last thing he needs is an insulation truck with Windows and insulation when the entire inside of the house needs fixing first.

The backdoor to this house has a latched screen door and a door behind screens. They are checked every night to make sure no one has gotten inside the house or has done anything to it. The door can be opened in the back of the house if you push really hard. So these guys show up at nine in the morning. I see them knock on the door they go underneath the house, the whole time I'm thinking perhaps one of my Aunts called these people to look at house in the see how much insulation or new windows they need in the house.

After no response from knocking on the door these men basically break into the house by shoving the door open and walking inside the house, which they did before I got to them, so they were basically breaking in and entering the house. When they leave, the door is wide-open and all the openings to the bottom of the house, where the underpinning is…wide-open as well. Now I can understand the mistakes in addresses, the house didn't have a house number on it that makes sense. But what I don't understand is somebody going to house knocking on the door finding out to that nobody’s there and breaking into the house and when they leave… the doors are wide-open.

So I call up this insulation company and the manager calls me back. Bear in mind that my wife and I myself had seen these people go inside the house after knocking on the door. I very nicely say I understand someone going to the wrong house, but I’d thought of let you know ahead of time just in case this happens to somebody else's house that was not as nice as I am about it. Somebody else would have thrown these guys in jail for breaking into their house. This guy proceeds to cover his own arse by saying the guy never went inside the house and a guy that was with them, the man in the lead truck, which is little pickup truck and behind the big truck, that he can attest to the fact that they never went inside the house. After going around in circles with this guy for about five or ten I say ‘look, I just thought you might want to know, in the future people might not be so nice. You might have a lawsuit or somebody in jail.’ Well this guy has the attitude that is the equivalent to somebody spitting in your face. A ‘your word against theirs’ thing. A basically ‘screw you’ type of thing.

Now I'm wondering what happened to service? What happened to common decency? What happened to the customer is a human being instead of a “your word against theirs, you big freaking liar”?

I already tell this guy he’s not in trouble. That no one cares about pressing any charges or anything like that. So for this man to do things in such a way was, I guess you could say unethical? Or you could just say “wrong”.

Life is sometimes longer or shorter than we would want to be depending on what our situation is and it doesn't hurt to treat somebody like a human being. And will not kill anyone to be an honest human being.

Before anybody gets into any sort of business they need to get some books on ethics. Perhaps some books on manners. Find out not only the proper economical way of doing business, but also the proper social way of doing business. Start off by treating the customer like a person who is not out to lie, cheat and steal.

I myself am taking the high road. I'm not going to give a hint of the where this insulation company is located. I'm not going to give the slightest hint of the name, phone number or anything like that. The last thing I wish when fighting the monster is to become a monster myself.

Website Redux finished!

Just revamped the website. Some things are still going to be put in later as far as slide shows, etc. Please drop by http://www.jadearcade.com and take a look.

Cheers!

Did you ever try to save time?

Did you ever try to save time? I'm always trying to save time in whatever I do whether it is art or writing or whatever. I'm always been impressed with the idea of writing with a tape recorder, dictating ideas while a machine slaves away taking down every little thought. Rod Serling was a good example of this, he was a heavily prolific writer and his main tool, from what I understand was a tape recorder. Of course ride was able to hire a type is to take the dictation and turn it into the wonderful words on the page. These words would eventually become twilight zone episodes, short stories and later on the night gallery TV show.

I've always wanted the like Rod, to throw ideas down a tape recorder's gullet and have wonderful batches of text shootout its rear end.

It seems perfect the idea of dictation, I think much faster than I can type and I can type quite fast. So when products like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM's Via Voice came down I was jumping for joy. Until I found out that I had to have at least a Pentium 2 computer to be able to run version seven of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which I'm dictating this to right now. Now on I'm having a few errors, which probably has something to do with the fact that my microphone might be crap or I haven't taught it enough about my own voice in the training portion of the program. And I have to get past any type of possible accident that I might have me being a person who is from the South. I don't really have an accent that I can tell, although I am quite used to my own voice people who live here happen to think that I come from somewhere else, being that I have no discernible accent that they can tell. I happen to have version 9 of this program and I've heard that version 9 is hidden shoulders better than version seven. But my laptop and my desktop or only opinion to the computers so version 9 won't even install on either one. So until a given your computer I'm stuck with any possible flaws that are present in version seven. Things like not being able to put down any type of exclamation without having to self edit it or waiting awhile and then saying the word, or exclamation point.

Plus I have to speak like a news anchor for heavens sake. Still is much faster with all it's flaws than typing what I have to say. Right now I'm working with a studio microphone without a breath guard and this program would probably understand more of what I'm saying if I had a proper condenser microphone. However the more I use it easier it seems to get.

I just have to read some more bedtime stories to it.

So if you're writer or just someone who can't type very quickly, or has arthritis or whatever then this is the ideal thing. I can't help but recommend this in the highest possible way. So if anybody at Dragon were listening I'd love to do a commercial for you guys in get some free product.

Site redux...

I'm in the middle of redoing my homepage. So please check for the changes.

Houdini

I have just finished watching a documentary on Houdini called "Houdini: Unlocking the Mystery". Unfortunately I missed the first hour and thirty minutes of this broadcast, although I've seen it before I just hate missing something I start out to watch.
Houdini has always been a person of great fascination to me. He's always been a bit of a real life super hero, right up there with Evel Knievel, Chaplin and Lord knows how many comic book artist and writers, etc. etc.
Houdini was one of those people that if you had a time machine and traveled back to stop that young collage fellow from hitting Houdini in the stomach and then tried to get him to a hospital..he would refuse, the show must go on!
Hell he was on stage with a high fever, collapsed after the first act, was revived and then did a little more for the crowd! Later that night he went to the hospital, underwent surgery, then died after a painful seven days.
So you'd have to kidnap him....eh...right...kidnap and hold the greatest escape artist of his, possibly our time.
Then there is the infection thing. Hospitals, medicine... they weren't as advanced as now. They didn't even have sulfa drugs for infection, a big deal for someone with an appendix that may or has ruptured.
There is such a long laundry list of things to worry about that, yes you could save him...but it would be damn difficult and he would not go quietly.
This is one of the endless things going on in my head at any given time. Historical "What ifs" and a great deal of the time they turn into books.
Cheers!
Jade Arcade

Antivirus on Linux

Although my Desktop is Windows XP, my laptop is Freespire, a Linux system. Anyone know of a really good, possibly free antivirus with a GUI?
I'm used to Panda on the Desktop but can't get it to install on the Linux, even with Crossover. Any suggestions folks?
Cheers!
Jade Arcade

WebComic and First post here!

Going to be putting out a webcomic or two soon so keep a look out for it here, my main page at www.jadearcade.com or on my mySpace profile. Oh yeah, and of course this is the first blog post! Cheers!